A very well attended meeting on Friday night – good.

The reasons for attendance – bad!

When things are going swimmingly (pun intended) people don’t tend to attend AGMs. When they have issues – they do!

Some of the many issues raised by the attendees included:

• Opening hours – the pool has frequently been closed, either because of equipment failures or staffing issues;
• Cleanliness – the state of the showers and the tiling of the pool leave something to be desired;
• The lack of a proper hairdryer;
• Lack of communication of unplanned closures.

Unfortunately the trustees were very defensive. They shouldn’t have been. People recognise that they are doing a difficult job and face many challenges – not least of which is that much of the equipment is old, doesn’t work properly, and needs replacing.

Hopefully once a new pool manager has been appointed (applications closed on Friday) things will improve.

The manager can look after the day-to-day running of the pool and the trustees can devote more time to longer term strategic issues.

For example:

• gaining access to so-called Section 106 money from the district council ;
• exploring options to obtain grants from other sources;
• communicating with both the Town Coucil and district Council;
• better public facing communication in general.

A bit of fund raising wouldn’t go amiss either.

The swimming pool is a very important part of our local community and needs to be kept going!